As late as 1938, a woman was arrested in Los Angeles for wearing pants in a courtroom, and was jailed for five days. The movie star Katharine Hepburn was frowned upon by Hollywood for wearing blue jeans to the set.

In 1969, I was sent home from public school for wearing pants to class. The walk to school was long, the winter was cold, and skirts were short. As I had on this day, I often chose to speed my trip to school by riding a bike, and I was sick of having the difference between the time it took to either walk or ride eaten up by having to get to the girls room to get changed ahead of class, an inconvenience that had no comparison among my male classmates. My fashion “don’t” caused quite a stir. Had I worn a floor-length skirt, I would have been deemed weird, but not in violation of the dress code. But the sight of pants on the female form, it seemed, was transgressively distracting. It earned me my junior-high nickname, “Stan the man.”

In 1993, only months after Hillary Rodham Clinton became first lady, Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, the first African-American woman (and the first woman of color) to win a seat in the U.S. Senate, joined Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland in wearing pants on the Senate floor, prompting the sergeant-at-arms to change the archaic rule prohibiting women senators so clad from standing at their desks in the upper chamber.

The anticipation of meeting a U.S. Supreme Court justice for the first time turned to shock and distress for a young Truman Foundation scholar in 1999 when, she says, Justice Clarence Thomas grabbed and squeezed her on the buttocks several times at a dinner party.

On Oct. 7, a night dominated by the disclosure of Donald Trump’s audio-recorded boasts about grabbing women, Moira Smith posted on Facebook a memory of her encounter with Thomas. “He groped me while I was setting the table, suggesting I should sit ‘right next to him,’ ” Smith wrote. Smith, now vice president and general counsel to Enstar Natural Gas Co., in Alaska, was 23 at the time of the dinner party at the Falls Church, Virginia, home of her boss.

Smith’s claim came amid the outrage and ongoing national conversation about inappropriate sexual treatment of women by powerful men, male acquaintances and strangers. The disclosure of the Trump tape has spurred women in startling numbers to come forward publicly with old memories of unwanted touches.

Smith spoke with The National Law Journal/Law.com multiple times by email and phone after she revealed her allegation on Facebook. Her three former housemates during the spring and summer of 1999 each said in interviews they remembered Smith describing inappropriate contact by Thomas after she came home that night from the dinner or early the next morning. They also remembered their own shock and inability to advise her about how to respond. Another Truman scholar that summer, whom Smith would later marry and divorce, said in an interview he “definitely remembered” her sharing with him what had happened soon after the dinner party.

Interviewed in the spin room after the presidential debate in St. Louis, in which Trump brushed off the comments as “locker room talk,” the Alabama senator noted that the real estate mogul already apologized for his “very improper language.”

“But beyond the language, would you characterize the behavior described in that as sexual assault if that behavior actually took place?” the Weekly Standard asked.

“I don’t characterize that as sexual assault,” Sessions replied. ”I think that’s a stretch. I don’t know what he meant—“

“So if you grab a woman by the genitals, that’s not sexual assault?” the Weekly Standard pressed.

It was the umbrellas that got us. That was all you could see in the photo, taken from above. Thousands of umbrellas filling the streets of Warsaw. And below them, thousands of women protesting a proposal to ban abortions in Poland. All abortions. No matter the circumstances. The measure would also punish women who got an… Continue Reading →

At least she saved us from unisex toilets. Phyllis Schlafly died Monday at the age of 92, bringing an end to more than a decade of Wonkette comments beginning “You mean to say that old hater is still alive?” Schlafly made a career out of portraying herself as a simple housewife who was so driven by… Continue Reading →